Hollywood Blockbusters Are Masterpieces; Art Is Pretentious

You're killing me, urkillingmesmalls.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Art may not be pretentious, but you sure as hell are.

Thanks bro.

Yeah, art isn't pretentious at all.

http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/st...ing-44-million

Best thread in MOFO

My red sports car though.

Did you see Doctor Strange yet, Zotis?

There is one friend of mine who watches all those super hero movies, and sometimes I go to them with him when we movie hop. But there's no way I'm paying to watch it, and he's already seen it. So the chances of me seeing it are very low now. And even the friends of mine who do watch those kind of movies said it was mediocre.

Heh, well, my original query was only half-joking. I guess it can wait until it hits TV or Netflix or whatever. Myself, I'm actually considering seeing it again while it's still in theatres (though, in fairness, that's because I've got a free pass that's due to expire soon and I want to see how the 2D theatrical version compares against the 3D).

Oh yeah, one of my friends saw it in 4D and said the effects were extremely distracting.

I'm not likely to watch it even when it comes on TV or Netflix. I don't have Netflix, but I watch it when I visit my dad and brother sometimes. I usually have a hard time finding something worth watching on it though. Netflix's selection sucks, and the way it gives you suggestions sucks even more. I mean if you click on stuff and decide you don't like it, it'll recommend more similar stuff just because you clicked on it. And I don't watch TV ever.

I got suckered into watching The Avengers and Avatar at friends' places when they all decided to put them on. That's about the only way I'm likely to see it. I can't remember enjoying a Marvel movie since Spiderman 2. I didn't care for the Dark Knight trilogy. I think the only DC movie I liked was Watchmen. I don't even plan on seeing Rogue One. The Force Awakened sucked. I mean, I did find it entertaining, but it was a terrible movie. I don't know. Part of me wants to boycott Rogue One out of some sense of principles, and part of me is tempted to watch it even though I'm sure it will be terrible. Doctor Strange doesn't even tempt me in the slightest.

Yeah, that's fair. I guess there's only so much any of us can actually convince you that blockbusters are worth your attention (even I'll concede that most of those movies you cite are around the mark for me anyway, so I'm not completely amazed by them myself even as I'm willing to offer defences). I'd say what's important here is that you are at least willing to recognise when people are able to offer a different perspective that you don't necessarily have to agree with but can at least recognise as an alternative interpretation that may further your overall understanding of a given film. Part of why I got so interested in Film Crit Hulk and recommended him to you is because the first article of his I read was a lengthy piece explaining the hidden brilliance of Kingsman (which is a film I have criticised at length here and elsewhere - hell, I would put money on you straight-up hating it). While it didn't make me love the film and I still found some points disagreeable, it did provide me with a degree of insight that made me realise there was a lot more to it than I had originally thought. This is the same guy who recently wrote a detailed breakdown of Under the Skin and its value as a work of art, so it's not just being contrarian for its own sake. Obviously, you don't have to force yourself to watch blockbusters and the like if that's not what you want to watch - you just don't have to act like people are fools for finding worth in the films where you don't.

I don't think I agree that everyone's perspectives are equally valid. I think everyone is entitled to their perspective, and I would fight for the rights of someone even if I disagree with them. But I think some make more of an effort to have a fuller perspective than others. Maybe you won't make your children eat their vegetables if they don't want to, but I believe in discipline. I'm glad my dad made me eat my vegetables because now I have a broader pallet and can enjoy more foods than I would be able to otherwise. It's that attitude that has helped me learn to appreciate art films. Otherwise I'd still be watching the same Hollywood Blockbusters I did when I was a kid, and I'd never have enjoyed the most beautiful movies I've ever seen.

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I don't think every perspective is equally valid either (in TONGO's Brokeback Mountain thread, I wrote that nobody is automatically entitled to bad opinions in response to a user saying they "[didn't] like homos"). Your comment about making an effort to gain a fuller perspective is an interesting one since I've essentially been arguing for the same thing but in a different direction. If we're going to use your food metaphor, then I'd compare blockbusters to hamburgers. Most of them may be lacking in nutritional value and be mass-produced by corporations for the consumption of an undiscerning public, but that description doesn't necessarily extend to every single hamburger ever made. You get the smaller chains or the gourmet restaurants or the individual chefs that use their relative freedom from the big companies' strict one-size-fits-all models to experiment with the basic framework of putting ingredients between a pair of buns in order to make something more worthwhile that the typical quarter pounder. While such a gourmet/healthy burger may not necessarily be a more nutritious meal than a garden salad, it still proves a preferable alternative to genuinely unhealthy junk and allows for a distinct experience of its own that is definitely worth consideration. The search then becomes about finding a good balance between the healthiness of a salad and the empty pleasure of a burger. I'll eat vegetables and appreciate their worth in terms of taste and nutrition, but I won't deny that there is something genuinely fulfilling about finding a genuinely well-made burger in a world where so many of them aren't well-made.

Well, I don't know if a hamburger as a food is a good comparison to Hollywood Blockbusters. But if someone said their favorite hamburger was a Big Mac, or that Big Macs are good, well they are certainly entitled to that perspective. But if someone said the best hamburger of all time was the Big Mac, sorry but I don't think that's valid at all. They have the right to that opinion, but it's just plain wrong. A Big Mac is not the best hamburger hamburger out there. It's extremely unhealthy and prepared by some kid who doesn't care. Hollywood Blockbusters are like fast food burgers, and Arthouse is like gourmet. I don't even know if there is a burger comparison that qualifies, but Tarkovsky is like Jiro Ono's sushi and X-Men movies are like sushi from the grocery store. You may want to buy it once in a while because it's cheap and convenient and you're willing to settle for less at a given moment to end your hunger, you may even like it, but there's no way that it can be argued that it's better, or that it's so subjective if you prefer grocery store sushi it's better for you. I'm sure there are some sushi dishes, that no matter how expensive and well prepared a lot of people would cringe at the taste. That isn't because it tastes bad. It's just because they haven't acquired a taste for it, like octopus or something.

In fairness, it is an iffy metaphor no matter which side you take. Food is a daily requirement so one's consumption of it would always differ significantly from one's consumption of film (one can only imagine what it would be like if you had to watch three films a day to stay alive and well). My point was that I was arguing for a nuanced approach to the wide variety of films out there whereas you were focusing on the idea of a rigid cinematic hierarchy based on objective quality more than anything else (which I'd say would also be the problem with your hypothetical Big Mac lover - an extreme's an extreme, after all). This ends up making you seem as ideologically inflexible as the stereotypical "won't watch old/black-and-white/subtitled movies" moviegoer, albeit for vastly different reasons. It gets back to the whole idea of film as an art form and that objective qualities are not the be-all and end-all when it comes to judging a given work's overall worth. It's like that bit in Dead Poets Society (yeah yeah, but bear with me) where Robin Williams' character makes the students tear out a page in their textbooks that uses an XY line graph to measure a poem's quality. Breaking down art to an exact science where there are right answers and wrong answers may be possible, but it doesn't totally get just why art affects people in the first place.

You misunderstood me. I meant that the discrepancy was in using a hamburger to represent Hollywood Blockbusters. Within hamburgers you have industry norms and gourmet artistry. I used sushi instead because it's a little clearer. I don't know of any hamburgers that take it as far as they've taken sushi in terms of making it an art form. Hollywood Blockbusters do not range from run-o-the-mill mediocrity to artistry, they just range from garbage to half-decent. What Hollywood Blockbuster would you say is on par in artistic merit with Solaris or Stalker?

Jaws.

I don't think the quality of art is linear either. When trying to determine if one piece of art is better than another it requires both objectivity and subjectivity, and you can only determine which is greater by comparing them with each other. You can't necessarily tell if one particular work of art is better than another, but with a stark contrast it is obvious, at least to the trained eye.

It's always nice when people bitch about the results of something they couldn't be bothered to participate in.

How do you know no one watched it? A list of 25 is pretty limiting and animation is a medium in which a lot of people have well established favorites. So even if people did watch it, it was up against tough competition. I just checked the spreadsheet and it did score some points. If you really wanted it represented on the list, you should have voted.

Granted, I didn't watch it back then. But I had a list of long-time favorites that I was going to vote for no matter what. I also had a short list of films that I'd been meaning to check out for a long time. Any newly watched film that was going to make it on my ballot would have had to make a huge impression immediately.

Anyway, the reason why I'm posting here is because I watched Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade a few days ago. I thought it was a solid movie, and I could see myself possibly liking it more in the future, but it didn't blow me away. I still would not have voted for it had I watched it back then.

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